Patient Care

The number of visits to our Emergency Department continues to grow at an astounding rate. Our Emergency Medicine faculty provide continuous coverage of both the MUSC Emergency Department as well as the Chest Pain Center in the new Ashley River Towers MUSC facility. The volumes in the adult ED alone are now over 70,000 per year. We have responded by increasing coverage and now have as many as four licensed providers working simultaneously during peak hours. This is not counting our resident physicians or medical students who while supervised increase patient care even further. As always we are practicing with the most state-of-the-art equipment available as well as highly advanced specialists in every field of medicine. Unlike non-teaching facilities we are able to provide a specialist in virtually any field to the bedside 24/7, every day of the year.

We have worked cooperatively with our expert Trauma Surgeons for many years and have an extremely efficient unit for treating trauma. We have bedside ultrasound and a high-speed 128-slice CT scanner physically located in the ED – scans are fast and highly accurate. Our goal which is met in the vast majority of traumas is a disposition on any patient within 20 minutes of arrival.

In the same cooperative model established with Surgery, we have worked additionally with our Cardiology and Neurology colleagues and established incredibly fast response times for our acute chest pain and stroke patients.

We established a special heart attack or STEMI alert with Cardiology and cath lab personnel and working additionally with Charleston County EMS and their ability to send us an EKG from the field we are obtaining record door-to-cath lab times. Our goal is to have this happen under 90 minutes and we have been successful more than 90% of the time since the rapid-response process was initiated. Couple this with our expert Cardiologists (we train those practicing at other facilities), our heart care is second to none.

Similarly working with Neurology and Neurosurgery, we developed a “Brain Attack Team” which has it’s goal of a team of specialists at the bedside in 15 minutes or less in response to a possible stroke or bleeding in the brain. Combined with unparalleled expertise in both Neuroradiology and Interventional Neuroradiology we offer the absolute best care available in the Lowcountry for potentially catastrophic neurologic events.

In addressing every day patients with the most intricate and exotic medical problems, and by constantly interacting with multiple highly advanced specialists and leaders in their field, the staff of MUSC’s Emergency Department carries a level of experience and knowledge that can’t be found elsewhere in South Carolina. Add to this our unique diagnostic capabilities and specialists, and you have the best Emergency care available in the area.